Exactly what steps has ICANN taken to clean up its act? Is there any indication of greater transparency? Has it become a more representative organization? Has it become more accountable? Does it now intend to respect community consensus?

Please detail those aspects of the "reform" that you consider to be positive. I can't find any.

Really. ICANN has been a litany of failures. It has no at large, it has no independent review panel, it has no functional conflict of interest committee, its own Board member has to go to court to access documents from its secretive staff. Its rollout of new TLDs has been a series of unmitigated disasters (wait for that to get even worse in the coming year), it has replaced a monopoly with a cartel at the registry level, at the registrar level it has replaced a monopoly with a bunch of scammers. Its redelegation of .org (and what happened to the redelegation of .net?) is following suit. A significant number of stakeholders are holding stakes they want to drive through its tiny black heart.

The current reform just means that the same players responsible for this constant stream of travesties will have even more power, operate more in the shadows, be even less accountable (ICANNWatching will probably become more difficult, and certainly more necessary). That Nancy Victory, despite knowing all of this and much more, would categorize this as going in the right direction, only shows that she can spout the same platitudes as Touton, Lynn, Dyson, et al, apparently without shame. If the US won't do something constructive, it's time for the rest of the world, perhaps via the ITU, to take more control. -g